LSU baseball had the Stony Brook trout look
Yeah, it's too easy, but I have to pick this low-hanging fruit. Stony Brook won the super regional tonight in Baton Rouge, advancing to the College World Series at LSU's expense.
Yeah, I'm saying it: LSU had the Stony Brook trout look.
By way of an explanation, here is what I posted after Alabama defeated LSU in the BCS national championship football game:
Alabama's 21-0 beatdown of LSU in the BCS national championship game Monday looks no better today than it did that night. Without diminishing the extraordinary preparation and performance by the Crimson Tide, I would not be surprised if some internal link in the chain within the LSU program was broken at a critical time.
There is a big chain in the LSU squad room at the football operations facility, representing how each person is a link in the chain. Something happened to compromise that chain, and Alabama finished the job in impressive fashion.
All week something else has been nagging at me about that game. I finally figured it out. To refresh my memory, I dug through the archives to find coverage of Florida's 41-9 victory against LSU in 2000, when I worked at The Advocate in Baton Rouge. The Tigers came home with their tails between their legs, which their coach, Nick Saban, described by referring to another animal.
"We had too many guys out there with that look. I call it the 'brook trout' look. You catch a fish, then you look at it. It gives you that blank stare. We had a lot of blank stares out there."
More than 11 years later, Saban's national championship Alabama squad gave LSU that look. Different players and coaches wore the look at different times, but one by one, the Tigers were caught fish with no wriggle room. Hooked. Caught. Over.
If, in 2000, you had said Saban would turn LSU into a team that gave other teams the brook trout look, you might have heard doubts. Saban and LSU were not what they'd become together.
If, in 2000, you had said Saban would turn Alabama back into a program that would give LSU the brook trout look in a national championship game in the Superdome, the response might have been, "Huh?"
Life is stranger than fiction.
Sorry, but after watching Stony Brook steal a super regional from LSU in Alex Box Stadium, it's a pun I just can't pass up.
And for the record, Stony Brook was the better team in the three-game series: better coaching, better pitching, better hitting -- and the look of a team that played fearless baseball, with nothing to lose. The only time LSU led in the three games? When the winning run scored to end the first game. Stony Brook did not trail at any time while a pitcher threw a pitch in this super regional.
The visitors had the Tigers on the hook, and they didn't let them wriggle their way off. Impressive.
It will be one great fish story for the Stony Brook players to tell the rest of their lives.
